Trump says ‘we took it out’ amid US-Caracas tensions but not clear if incident occurred inside Venezuelan waters

The US military has conducted “a lethal strike” against an alleged “drug vessel” from Venezuela, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has announced amid growing tensions between Washington and Caracas.

Donald Trump trailed the announcement during an address at the White House on Tuesday afternoon, telling reporters the US had “just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out … a drug-carrying boat”.

“And there’s more where that came from. We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country,” the US president added. “We took it out,” he said of the boat.

Shortly after, Rubio offered further details of the incident on social media, tweeting that the military had “conducted a strike in the southern Caribbean against a drug vessel which had departed from Venezuela and was being operated by a designated narco-terrorist organization”.